MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014)

for Twilight of the Arnor (Ultimate Edition on Steam)

[Disclaimer: Stardock does not endorse or support this mod. This thread has merely been stickied so users can more easily direct comments or questions to the authors of this popular modification.]

Some time ago the modding community started poking around in the TA tech trees to see why the AI was reluctant to develop certain techs. We found that some weapons techs were categorised as PD, instead of Military, meaning that unless missile weapons were deployed, those techs would never be researched by the AI. Obviously, an AI that can't fight back isn't much of a challenge.

The idea behind this mod was originally just to get the TA AI on the right track as far as weapons are concerned. However as suggestions have been put forward by the community, more improvements have been made to the tech trees. Some features have been driven by my own need to fix annoyances.

For example there is the AI's passion for spamming factories or labs onto every tile, crashing their early economy. These basic improvements would get upgraded and then cost the AI even more in terms of miantenance and production cost, forcing the AI to run inefficiently with the production slider at far less than 100%.

So my approach has been to deprive human and AI alike of early structures that can cause economic meltdown, and in their place have Super Projects which allow for some single-planet focus.

N.B. Use the external link above or choose one of the versions below. The successive versions are not patches, they contain all the features of that version of the mod. Extract the ZIP folder to your mods folder - if one doesn't already exist, create it. If your mod select screen in-game is broken, see here to fix it.

Yor buildings - removed limitations on collectives. Reduced output of collectives but added a % bonus to manufacturing. Brought collective cost to build more in line with other factories. Research Matrix is now Cybernetic Matrix, increases mp and tp by 12, with a 25% bonus on top, increased cost to 90 and maintenance to 7.

General buildings - Industrial Sector cost reduced to 180, maintenance reduced to 7bc. Omega Research Centre now adds 20tp and boosts research by 65%.

Torian buildings - Reduced cost of University to 80. Reduced cost of City of Learning to 100 and maintenance to 6. Technology commune now adds 10tp and only costs 350, maintenance reduced to 7.

Default ships: Altered GC2Ships.xml to remove the obligatory Hyperdrive and extra crap from some of the starting designs, increased Support modules in a few cases.

Iconian buildings: Precursor Archive maintenance reduced to 4. Precursor Library maintenance reduced to 4. Precursor Matrix is now a Super Project which adds 12tp and improves civ's Economics ability by 40. Precursor Repository is now a Super Project which adds 16tp and improves civ's Research ability by 20.

Power Plant buildings scrapped. There are now three new Trade Goods, Fusion Power generators, Anti-matter Power generators, and Quantum Power generators which increase social or military production abilities.

Known issue: Arcean 'Space Weapons' (new) tech is not properly costed, should be 180 not 600.

Arcean tech tree streamlining - some techs are now optional rather than core.

Fixed Space Weapons costing in Arcean tech tree. It is no longer core, because Arceans have access to Fusion Beams earlier on, but it does give access to Missile Weapon Theory and Mass Driver Theory in case the player wants Stinger or Railguns.

Yor and Zylon buildings - cybernetic versions of the Research Centre, Research Academy, Invention Matrix and Discovery Sphere. These are all half the usual maintenance cost. However there is no cybernetic version of the Research Co-ordination Centre or Neutrality Learning Centre. Manufacturing Vortex now a Super Project granting +30 to Social Production as opposed to +15% manufacturing per planet.

Aha . . . I was recently wondering at the failure of some races to research space weapons and build warships. Been puzzled watching the Korx attempt to wage wars with nothing but transports.

I'll have to look into fixing this. Too bad I'm already way invested in a major game.

Thanks!

PS - My 5 second glance shows that the Minor Race tech tree has the same issue. Not sure how much it matters to you, but for those of us with colonizing minors it would be nice to see them at least try to hold their own.

PPS - I wonder if this was intentionally done as a means to delay militarization by those races. It works - oftentimes too well.

Updated the mod. Defence Industries tech for Thalans (pre-requisite for Space Weapons) is now in the Weapons branch instead of Defences branch. Don't know if that changes things for the AI, but certainly in the game I just played they didn't seem interested in progressing past this tech.

The tech trees for Minor and Dread Lords get fixed too, I just forgot to mention it above.

Great. I noticed the Dread Lords later, so glad I didn't have to mention it.

I think I have to give another thanks for this one. I went through and removed the PD category from the Altarians, Terrans, Drath, and Korx, then autoran a test game out to 2233. I was shocked. I was amazed. I saw something I've never before seen in all my Twilight experience - the Drath Legion had dominated the galaxy! I mean, I've seen them militarize and attempt to defend themselves, but I don't recall ever seeing them explode and dominate the galaxy.

Of the eight minors, one had a little nine planet empire with a decent military and looked about ready to maybe conquer a Yor world. Of course, it was dog-pile on the Yor at the time, but still that's pretty impressive. The others were lesser and some were in the process of being conquered themselves.

For the Thalans, you just changed the <Computing ID>/<Defenses ID> to <Weapons ID>? Did you change the category for Space Weapons from Pure Research to Military, or just leave it?

Thalans have the Defence Industries prerequisite, which I just changed to Military/Weapons. I already changed their Space Weapons tech to Military/Weapons.

In the game I'm running at the moment, a custom race with the Terran tech tree has the biggest military by far and there's no indication that anybody will be able to stop them. Of course, I have a plan...

The mod has definitely increased interstellar warfare, it'll be a lot more satisfying to win by conquest now I think. Assuming I can win against these bloodthirsty AIs.

The mod has definitely increased interstellar warfare, it'll be a lot more satisfying to win by conquest now I think. Assuming I can win against these bloodthirsty AIs.

This.

I ran another test and the wars started breaking out early to mid 2228, which is pretty unusual in my games. Even the minors were declaring war before too long. I would now wager a small sum that the PD tag was stuck in there to keep the peaceful races more-or-less peaceful until the wars started breaking out.

I wonder if a good middle ground might be to designate it as shields rather than PD? Missile tech is pretty uncommon, but lots of civs go for lasers. Would maybe help keep the peace but give an earlier/better signal to start with the weapons.

Either way, makes for an interesting game. Maybe it's time for me to actually hop into one of these test games.

Well, PD works as a category, it's just that missile weapons have to exist for the associated tech to look worthwhile to the AI. So in a game where no missiles get invented, the AI apparently researches every military tech they can get their hands on, except Space Weapons and the stuff beyond it. In my opinion, the aggression slider for a given race is a pretty good way of regulating their tendency to war, and I'd rather that the AI be free to pursue research that gives it a chance of winning.

Though I have to agree, it's a bit of a beamfest at the moment. It seems I'm the oddball, firing high-velocity bullets.

Thing is though, after Space Weapons is researched the following techs have quite a low AI value, but they are categorised as Military. So it's possible that the category has some sort of multiplicative effect when certain conditions are met. This means that when the situation changes then the most valued tech changes too. For example, if the economy overheats then the AI will favour techs which lead to new economic structures.

Without being put in the military category, the multiplier effect for other techs (assuming it exists) could override the strong AI value for Space Weapons.

I'm not sure if it actually worked, though. The Altarians have yet to research Space Weapons (it's early 2229) and the Terrans hadn't before I traded it to them for their economic treaty. I have yet to encounter the Thalans, Drath, or Korx. The minors haven't researched it either. However, I forgot to do the "quicksave fix" that's needed to make them non-stupid, so that may factor into it.

So far the only thing I've noticed different from a normal GalCiv game is that the Drengin have gone absolutely insane, colonizing 22 planets (more then anyone but the Terrans) and still churning out ships. There's many other aspects of the game modded and it almost certainly has nothing to do with the weapons fix. I just thought it was interesting to note.

I don't know what would cause a lack of colony ship production. Those can be built from the start of the game, so changing the category of a few techs isn't going to mess with that. You should check that the computer civs have their intelligence level set properly, a lack of it might cause them to twiddle their thumbs.

This is very interesting. Once I started looking at the tech trees, I saw many other techs that were in odd categories. For example, take a took at the Iconian tech tree--at least on my machine, many techs appeared mislabeled (e.g. Advanced Logistics is categorized as "Biological Warfare"!) Of course it's hard to know which of these are legitimate mistakes, and which were intended by the programmers as work-arounds for undesirable ai behaviors.

It seems worthwhile to experiment with the tech tree categories, as it's already had a big effect on my games. For example, I've always wondered why the computer Korx player doesn't research Mercenaries and Fortified Freighters (in ToA). I noticed these techs were categorized as 'trade'. I tried switching the category to 'economics', and now the ai player will get them.

There could be many more examples, we all know how buggy this game is.

This is very interesting. It seems possible that strange tech categories may be responsible for many of Twilight's bugs, as well as the disappointing failures of some AIs to research their unique techs.

I think I'll have to download MarvinKosh's original mod though, as my attempts to replicate it have all failed.

Edit: The Iconian tech tree's categories are just bizarre. The organic hull research path is listed as "Colonization" and one mass driver tech is listed as "beam"! Other tech trees have wacky categories as well, though the Iconians are the worst.

Over the next few days I'm going to try editing all the tech trees so categories are more logical. We'll see what happens.

See what kind of a can you opened here, Marvin? Now I'm going to have to go through and start playing with the categories.

This is linking in well with my personal experience, as I only recently began even looking at all the unique tech trees. I had only played Terran and Yor extensively before. Now I'm using Arcean and Torian, and I've actually gone and looked at the other trees.

Good work on the Korx, Deweyjohn. Those are pretty big techs for them to not use at all. That'll be my next change.

I'm trying to get the Krynn ai to pursue an influence strategy, instead of just filling up every planet with generic factories and research labs as they do in ToA. On my first try I increased the ai value of all influence techs in their tech tree from 5 to 15, and increased the value of the consulate to 50 in the planetary improvements .xml. They built consulates on all their planets so that part worked, but they still didn't get JihadOfKrynn until after planetary invasion, so the research techs may need to be valued even higher, or alternatively re-categorized to trick the ai into researching those techs.

It was a lot more fun than usual. Everyone was hobbled by the galactic speed restriction event. The Terrans ended up owning about half the galaxy, but their military was only so awesome because of three military resources. Once I discovered all the military resources I sent my fleets to knock them out and build my own starbases on those resources.

In the end the Terrans lost because of their smug superiority. Despite having a major advantage in research capacity, they had barely researched Laser IV when I launched my surprise attack, whereas I had already crammed some serious research in and got Pulse Cannons. With the loss of their military resources, they could wear down my forces but not actually stop them. They hung on for a while, researching all of the Particle Beam techs, but it did them no good because I had my ships fitted with shields in no time.

Compared with the unmodded games I had played before, it was much more challenging, even if the challenge went downhill a bit once I had control of the resources.

It was a lot more fun than usual. Everyone was hobbled by the galactic speed restriction event. The Terrans ended up owning about half the galaxy, but their military was only so awesome because of three military resources. Once I discovered all the military resources I sent my fleets to knock them out and build my own starbases on those resources.

In the end the Terrans lost because of their smug superiority. Despite having a major advantage in research capacity, they had barely researched Laser IV when I launched my surprise attack, whereas I had already crammed some serious research in and got Pulse Cannons. With the loss of their military resources, they could wear down my forces but not actually stop them. They hung on for a while, researching all of the Particle Beam techs, but it did them no good because I had my ships fitted with shields in no time.

Compared with the unmodded games I had played before, it was much more challenging, even if the challenge went downhill a bit once I had control of the resources.

I've got my own game going with this mod, plus a range-penalty mod and my minor colonization mod. It's been fairly interesting as well: I as Terrans against the Drengin, Altarians, Arceans, Torians, Yor, Thalans, Krynn, and 2 custom opponents that are effectively good Korx and evil Drath. It's definitely a change from the usual: the "Evil Drath", which have rarely done well before, are now dominating the galaxy and have teamed up with the Yor. I've formed an alliance with the good races and the Arceans to stop them, although the range penalty has cut down on the fighting.

The really memorable part, though, has been watching the minors in action. The Krynn attacked the Scottlingas early on, and the Scottlingas have been absolutely plastering them. So far they've conquered a Krynn planet and wrecked their ascension starbases, and kept colonizing while they're at it. To make things more impressive, no one else is at war with the Krynn - the Scottlingas have done it all alone.

Edit: I have to add, I'm really intrigued by the possibilities here. A lot of the stuff you can mod has no real effect on gameplay, just on graphics. This has the potential to completely alter how races make use of their tech trees.

Continuing the examination of strange tech categories and AI behavior, I've just finished compiling a list of all the unique tech branches that get ignored by their respective AI. I left off the Drengin and Korath because the Drengin never do well (except in one ongoing game) and I don't play against the Korath often. I intend to see how many of these are categorized into strange categories:

Altarians: Pretty much the entire Xeno Mysticism branch is ignored or left until late in the game. They also ignore the Temple/Shrine branch of morale improvements.

Arceans: Weather Control techs and the Planetary Fortification branch leading to Cathedral of Valor.

Drath: Weirdly, they tend to research most of the techs they share with the Altarians that the Altarians ignore. The only thing they seem to ignore is the Divergent Evolution branch.

Iconians: Hoo, boy. They never research the "Advanced Weapons" techs that let them move beyond their unique weapons and into the second weapons tier. They never research "Expert Engineering" and so never get medium or larger hulls unless traded the techs. They're really slow to research their economy techs and they completely ignore the organic hull branch and the manufacturing branch that begins with Interstellar Refining.

Korx: As mentioned above, they ignore their unique trade techs and Mercenaries.

Krynn: The Krynn do tend to research the "Laws of Krynn" branch of their religious techs, but almost always ignore the "Interstellar Missionaries" and "Superior Espionage" branches.

Terrans: The Terrans have a fairly mundane tech tree, so they don't really mess up with it. The one weird aspect is that they research Fleet Warp Bubbles but never actually build ships with them. That's another issue, though.

Thalans: For such a unique tech tree the Thalans could be worse, but they do tend to ignore the various techs branching off Basic Gravitronics until late in the game.

Torians: The Torians are good, but they can take an awful while to research their research techs. They also ignore Nano Materials, but that's probably because they get traded the techs it's a precursor to first.

Yor: Stellar Streams is almost always ignored. I've also never seen them research the Manufacturing Vortex techs.

I intend to try and sort these into more logical categories. If it works, expect to see a report sometime soon.

I wish I had more time to play with this stuff. It's a bit weird after all this time to come back and see how the custom tech trees are pretty much broken. I mean, we all knew Twilight was unfinished with respect to the new uniqueness of the races, but this just shows that it really never came anywhere close to what it was intended to be. Or maybe everybody knew that and I just came back around . . .

Wait, I know. It's just very interesting to begin seeing a reason and perhaps even a way to fix a big part of it. It's like all these funky categories were made up but the AI was never optimized to use them. It's about the closest we can get to a fix for TA without actually fixing the AIs.